Project description

Coursera Downloader

Introduction

Coursera is arguably the leader in
massive open online courses (MOOC) with a selection of more than 300
classes from 62 different institutions as of February
2013.
Generous contributions by educators and institutions are making
excellent education available to many who could not afford it otherwise.
There are even non-profits with “feet on the ground” in remote areas of
the world who are helping spread the wealth (see the feedback below from
Tunapanda).

This script makes it easier to batch download lecture resources (e.g.,
videos, ppt, etc) for Coursera classes. Given one or more class names
and account credentials, it obtains week and class names from the
lectures page, and then downloads the related materials into
appropriately named files and directories.

Why is this helpful? A utility like
wget
can work, but has the following limitations:

Video names have numbers in them, but this does not correspond to the
actual order. Manually renaming them is a pain that is best left for
computers.

Using names from the syllabus page provides more informative names.

Using wget in a for loop picks up extra videos which are not
posted/linked, and these are sometimes duplicates.

Browser extensions like DownloadThemAll is another possibility, but
coursera-dl provides more features such as appropriately named
files.

This work was originally inspired in part by
youtube-dl by which I’ve
downloaded many other good videos such as those from Khan Academy.

Features

Support for all kinds of courses (i.e., “Old Platform”/time-based as
well as “New Platform”/on-demand courses).

Intentionally detailed names, so that it will display and sort
properly on most interfaces (e.g.,
VLC
or MX Video on Android devices).

Regex-based section (week) and lecture name filters to download only
certain resources.

File format extension filter to grab resource types you want.

Login credentials accepted on command-line or from .netrc file.

Core functionality tested on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Disclaimer

coursera-dl is meant to be used only for your material that Coursera
gives you access to download.

We do not encourage any use that violates their Terms Of
Use. A relevant excerpt:

“[…] Coursera grants you a personal, non-exclusive,
non-transferable license to access and use the Sites. You may
download material from the Sites only for your own personal,
non-commercial use. You may not otherwise copy, reproduce,
retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise
transfer any material, nor may you modify or create derivatives
works of the material.”

Installation instructions

coursera-dl requires Python 2 or Python 3 and a free Coursera
account enrolled in the class of interest. (As of February of 2016, we
test automatically the execution of the program with Python versions
2.6, 2.7, Pypy, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5).

Note: We strongly recommend that you use a Python 3 interpreter
(3.4 or later).

On any operating system, ensure that the Python executable location is
added to your PATH environment variable and, once you have the
dependencies installed (see next section), for a basic usage, you will
need to invoke the script from the main directory of the project and
prepend it with the word python. You can also use more advanced
features of the program by looking at the “Running the script” section
of this document.

Note: You must already have (manually) agreed to the Honor of Code of
the particular courses that you want to use with coursera-dl.

Recommended installation method for all Operating Systems

From a command line (preferrably, from a virtual environment), simply
issue the command:

If this does not work, because your Python 2 version is too old (e.g.
2.7.5 on Ubuntu 14.4), try:

apt-get install python3 python3-pip
pip3 install coursera

instead.

Note 1: Note that the PyPI package is called simply coursera,
but the command-line is called coursera-dl. This is an unfortunate
fact related to conflicting names.

Note 2: We strongly recommend that you don’t install the package
globally on your machine (i.e., with root/administrator privileges), as
the installed modules may conflict with other Python applications that
you have installed in your system (or they can interfere with
coursera-dl). Prefer to use the option --user to
pip install, if you need can.

Note 3: As already mentioned, we strongly recommend that you use a
new Python 3 interpreter (e.g., 3.4 or later), since Python 3 has better
support for SSL/TLS (for secure connections) than earlier versions. If
you must use Python 2, be sure that you have at least Python 2.7.9
(later versions are OK). Otherwise, you can still use coursera-dl,
but you will have to install the extra package ndg-httpsclient,
which may involve compilation (at least on Linux systems).

Alternative ways of installing missing dependencies

We strongly recommend that you consider installing Python packages with
pip, as in it is the
current preferred
method, unless
directed otherwise by one of the project members (for instance, when
testing or debugging a new feature or using the source code directly
from our git repository). If you are using pip, you can directly
install all the dependencies from the requirements file using
pip install -r requirements.txt.

Alternative installation method for Unix systems

We strongly recommend that you install coursera-dl and all its
dependencies in a way that does not interfere with the rest of your
Python installation. This is accomplished by the creation of a virtual
environment, or “virtualenv”.

For the initial setup, in a Unix-like operating system, please use the
following steps (create/adapt first the directory
/directory/where/I/want/my/courses):

We are working on streamlining this whole process so that it is as
simple as possible, but to support older versions of Python and to cope
with Coursera disabling SSLv3, we have to take a few extra steps. In any
case, it is highly recommended that you always install the latest
version of the Python interpreter that you can.

Installing dependencies on your own

Warning: This method is not recommended unless you have experience
working with multiple Python environments.

You can use the pip program to install the dependencies on your own.
They are all listed in the requirements.txt file (and the extra
dependencies needed for development are listed in the
requirements-dev.txt file).

To use this method, you would proceed as:

pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

The second line above should only be needed if you intend to help with
development (and help is always welcome) or if a maintainer of the
project asks you to install extra packages for debugging purposes.

Once again, before filing bug reports, if you installed the dependencies
on your own, please check that the versions of your modules are at least
those listed in the requirements.txt file (and,
requirements-dev.txt file, if applicable).

Note: If your ls command is aliased to display a colorized
output, you may experience problems. Be sure to escape the ls
command (use \ls) to assure that no special characters get sent to
the script.

Note that we do support the New Platform (“on-demand”) classes.

On *nix platforms, the use of a ~/.netrc file is a good alternative
to specifying both your username (i.e., your email address) and password
every time on the command line. To use it, simply add a line like the
one below to a file named .netrc in your home directory (or the
equivalent, if you are
using Windows) with contents like:

machine coursera-dl login <user> password <pass>

Create the file if it doesn’t exist yet. From then on, you can switch
from using -u and -p to simply call coursera-dl with the
option -n instead. This is especially convenient, as typing
usernames (email addresses) and passwords directly on the command line
can get tiresome (even more if you happened to choose a “strong”
password).

Resuming downloads

In default mode when you interrupt the download process by pressing
CTRL+C, partially downloaded files will be deleted from your disk and
you have to start the download process from the begining. If your
download was interrupted by something other than KeyboardInterrupt
(CTRL+C) like sudden system crash, partially downloaded files will
remain on your disk and the next time you start the process again, these
files will be discraded from download list!, therefore it’s your job to
delete them manually before next start. For this reason we added an
option called --resume which continues your downloads from where
they stopped:

coursera-dl -u <user> -p <pass> --resume sdn1-001

This option can also be used with external downloaders:

coursera-dl --wget -u <user> -p <pass> --resume sdn1-001

Note 1: Some external downloaders use their own built-in resume
feature which may not be compatible with others, so use them at your own
risk.

NOTE: If your password contains punctuation, quotes or other “funny
characters” (e.g., <, >, #, &, | and so on), then
you may have to escape them from your shell. With bash or other
Bourne-shell clones (and probably with many other shells) one of the
better ways to do so is to enclose your password in single quotes, so
that you don’t run into problems. See issue
#213 for more
information.

Troubleshooting

If you have problems when downloading class materials, please try to see
if one of the following actions solve your problem:

Make sure the class name you are using corresponds to the resource
name used in the URL for that class:
https://class.coursera.org/<CLASS_NAME>/class/index

Have you tried to clean the cached cookies/credentials with the
--clear-cache option?

Note that many courses (most, perhaps?) may remove the materials
after a little while after the course is completed, while other
courses may retain the materials up to a next session/offering of the
same course (to avoid problems with academic dishonesty, apparently).
In short, it is not guaranteed that you will be able to download
after the course is finished and this is, unfortunately, nothing that
we can help you with.

Make sure you have installed and/or updated all of your dependencies
according to the requirements.txt file as described above.

One can export a Netscape-style cookies file with a browser extension
(1,
2)
and use it with the -c option. This comes in handy when the
authentication via password is not working (the authentication
process changes now and then).

If results show 0 sections, you most likely have provided invalid
credentials (username and/or password in the command line or in your
.netrc file).

For courses that have not started yet, but have had a previous
iteration sometimes a preview is available, containing all the
classes from the last course. These files can be downloaded by
passing the --preview parameter.

If you get an error like Could not find class: <CLASS_NAME>,
then:

Verify that the name of the course is correct. Current class names
in coursera are composed by a short course name e.g. class and
the current version of the course (a number). For example, for a
class named class, you would have to use class-001,
class-002 etc.

Second, verify that you are enrolled in the course. You won’t be
able to access the course materials if you are not officially
enrolled and agreed to the honor course via the website.

If:

You get an error when using -n to specify that you want to use
a .netrc file and,

You want the script to use your default netrc file and,

You get a message saying coursera-dl: error: too few arguments

Then you should specify -- as an argument after -n, that is,
-n-- or change the order in which you pass the arguments to the
script, so that the argument after -n begins with an hyphen
(-). Otherwise, Python’s argparse module will think that what
you are passing is the name of the netrc file that you want to use.
See issue #162.

Filing an issue/Reporting a bug

When reporting bugs against coursera-dl, please don’t forget to
include enough information so that you can help us help you:

Is the problem happening with the latest version of the script?

What operating system are you using?

Do you have all the recommended versions of the modules? See them in
the file requirements.txt.

What is the course that you are trying to access?

What is the precise command line that you are using (feel free to
hide your username and password with asterisks, but leave all other
information untouched).

What are the precise messages that you get? Please, use the
--debug option before posting the messages as a bug report.
Please, copy and paste them. Don’t reword/paraphrase the messages.

Feedback

I enjoy getting feedback. Here are a few of the comments I’ve received:

“Thanks for the good job! Knowledge will flood the World a little
more thanks to your script!” Guillaume V. 11/8/2012

“Just wanted to send you props for your Python script to download
Coursera courses. I’ve been using it in Kenya for my non-profit to
get online courses to places where internet is really expensive and
unreliable. Mostly kids here can’t afford high school, and
downloading one of these classes by the usual means would cost more
than the average family earns in one week. Thanks!” Jay L.,
Tunapanda 3/20/2013

“I am a big fan of Coursera and attend lots of different courses.
Time constraints don’t allow me to attend all the courses I want at
the same time. I came across your script, and I am very happily using
it! Great stuff and thanks for making this available on Github - well
done!” William G. 2/18/2013

“This script is awesome! I was painstakingly downloading each and
every video and ppt by hand – looked into wget but ran into wildcard
issues with HTML, and then.. I came across your script. Can’t tell
you how many hours you’ve just saved me :) If you’re ever in Paris /
Stockholm, it is absolutely mandatory that I buy you a beer :)”
Razvan T. 11/26/2012

“Thanks a lot! :)” Viktor V. 24/04/2013

Contact

Please, post bugs and issues on
github. Send
other comments to Rogério Theodoro de Brito (the current maintainer):
rbrito@ime.usp.br (twitter:
[@rtdbrito]21) or to John Lehmann
(the original author): first last at geemail dotcom (twitter:
[@jplehmann]12).